Current Doctor exceeds expectations

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Peter Capaldi (left) and Jenna Louise Coleman (right) star in this season of Doctor Who as the 12th Doctor and Clara Oswald, the dynamic duo that saves the world over and over.

Listen, Whovians! The dashing Doctor is back, and he has new kidneys.

“Doctor Who,” the British TV show that has been on BBC for a whopping 50 years, is about the Doctor, who travels through time and space in his spaceship, the T.A.R.D.I.S.

When the Doctor is wounded or near death, he can regenerate into a different version of himself.

Season eight of “Doctor Who” premiered on Aug. 23, but now a new face is playing the Doctor: Peter Capaldi.

Last season’s Christmas special, “Time of the Doctor,” left fans on a cliffhanger. The 11th Doctor (Matt Smith) found himself slowly dying from old age and under attack from one of his oldest enemies, the Daleks.

The first episode of this season picked up with a T-Rex rampaging the streets of Victorian London.

Throughout the episode, the Doctor’s companion, Clara Oswald (Jenna Louise Coleman), displays her frustration and confusion with the Doctor’s sudden change in appearance and demeanor.

It isn’t until the end that she finally accepts that the Doctor is still the same man as before.

As far as writing and new story arcs are concerned, fans loved the usage of time in the episode “Time Heist.” In the episode, the Doctor and Clara took part in robbing the Bank of Karabraxos, with no recollection of why they agreed to such a crime.

“I like when they use time-travel as part of the device of the story-line and how the plot rolls out to us as a viewing audience,” said English teacher Donna Montague. “It just makes it fun for me.”

It appears one of the major story arcs this season deals with “the promised land.”

In every episode so far, there has been a scene in which the character that died in that episode appears in “the promised land” and is greeted by a mysterious woman who claims that the Doctor is her boyfriend.

“There were some episodes I felt like the after-life arc was really forced, like in the episode ‘The Caretaker’,” said senior Hayden Adoff. “It felt like it didn’t really belong there.”

Over the summer, Whovians were anxious to see how well Capaldi would do in the role.

One worry fans had was the age of the 12th Doctor, considering the fact that the 9th, 10th, and 11th Doctors were fairly young.

But senior Mariana Costa thinks otherwise.

“I like that he’s older,” she said. “I feel that adds to his character. You know that the Doctor is already experienced with his age, but it never showed before.”

The 11th Doctor (Smith) was the youngest actor to play the Doctor. The sudden jump to Capaldi’s age grew controversy over whether Capaldi was right for the part.

Capaldi has been quite the change from the ever so quirky and beloved “Sand Shoes and Granddad.”

But some Whovians, like senior Matthew Looney, think he’s doing a good job.

“[Capaldi is] definitely a lot darker than Smith or Tennant,” said Looney. “But I think it’s more because he has a lot of acting experience. I think maybe he wants to take the character in a different direction.”

The 12th Doctor is a lot more serious this time around.

“I really like the new Doctor because he’s stoic and he has this tough personality that I haven’t seen since Eccleston (the 9th Doctor),” said senior Zara Minwalla.

“His no-nonsense demeanor makes him a little harder to love since Smith was my Doctor and he was always so vivacious,” she continued.

Despite past controversy, Whovians are adjusting very well to the new Doctor. The Doctor is still in the process of discovering himself, so we’ll have to wait and see if his question,“Am I a good man?”, will be answered.